The Star and the Ocean… A Wattpad Featured Story?

It’s been a couple of weeks but I’m still having a hard time wrapping my mind around the fact that The Star and the Ocean is finished. This is especially notable when you consider just how chaotic the last couple of weeks have been.

The short version of events: I got laid off from my day job and have been tearing up my roots in order to relocate to a new city (Vancouver, to be specific). Between moving and looking for work, things have been stressful and, at times, it’s been difficult to find things to get excited about.

BUT!

I did get a bit of good news this month that I’ve been too busy to write about until now.

Within hours of changing TSATO’s Wattpad status to ‘complete’ I submitted the story to be considered for Wattpad’s Feature List.

For anyone who isn’t familiar, Featured Lists are Wattpad’s staff-curated collections of top stories, sorted by genre. These stories are considered the best of the best and are kind of a big deal if you’re trying to gain more exposure. To make it onto one of these bad boys a story needs to be complete (or pretty close and on track), well-crafted, and polished. Once you plead your case, it’s up to Wattpad’s Creator Relations team to review your story. Until that happens, all you can really do is wait.

I had read ﻿it can take up to 6 weeks for a submitted story to be reviewed, so I sent my application and settled in for a long wait.

That was on Monday, February 13th.

On Friday the 17th, I checked my e-mail and found a message from Wattpad letting me know that TSATO had officially been selected for the Feature List.

I then proceeded to FREAK OUT.

My feature goes up tomorrow, March 1st. I’m still in shock, and kind of feel like I won’t really be able to believe it until it’s live and real. Regardless, it’s crazy flattering to have been accepted. I’m looking forward to hopefully getting some more feedback as I get started on the sequel!

Speaking of feedback, today is the LAST DAY to participate in my story character artwork contest! I’ll be doing a draw tomorrow from the names of people who have left at least three comments on the Wattpad edition of TSATO this month. The prize? A full-colour digital piece of artwork of one of your OCs! You can read all the details here.